life on the island of Hönö

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Monthly Archives: September 2013

First frost night before yesterday. A beautiful walk around the cemetery, in one of Hönös’ nature reserves. Suddenly we heard this loud peeping and fluttering and saw hundreds and hundreds of birds! Like my daughter said it made it a memorable day. Made me remember googling Murmuration on Youtube, a warning, it will give you serious goosebumps.

Swimming yesterday morning I watched all the boats out lobster potting so coming home I rang my uncle, who was…yep out lobster potting. I nagged him to let me go along next time, even though I’m a girl, he said sure thing.
Early this morning my cousin picked me up. His friends had warned him about bringing women folk fishing, saying we wouldn’t catch a thing. Lucky me my relatives don’t believe in silly old superstition.
My uncle steered while my cousin hauled in the pots (hummertinor in Swedish and kuber in island dialect). Crabs, lots of starfish but no lobster. Apparently there is rope that sinks and rope that floats. Every islander know to use the sinking rope or it can float up and get caught in someone’s propeller. While they are swearing about stupid towns people using floating rope, one gets caught in the propeller. Bad thing, they had to turn the propeller off and we started drifting, luckily it was calm sea. Cousin saved the day by cutting the rope and fished the boj up (the round thing that floats and shows you where you’ve dropped your lobster pot, maybe it’s called the same in english?), in dialect it’s weler. By law you have to write your name and phone number on the boj so it didn’t take extensive detective skills to find out who’s it was. Bet the guy wasn’t too happy finding it hanging on his mailbox.
Then, lo and behold, a lobster! and one more! They both agreed on that maybe having women folk on the boat wasn’t too bad, their luck had doubled since the day before.
On the way home my uncle took a route where they had seen lots of seals, I had told them earlier that I’d only seen two before, suddenly there were seals everywhere! Like little black bojs popping up and down the surface. Perfect finish to a fantastic trip! Actually a great thing to was watching the great teamwork between father and son and hearing the lingo. If I hadn’t grown up hearing the island dialect from my gran and sometimes my mum I wouldn’t have understood one word.

Even more perfect was the meal in the evening. Crab soup with veg from the garden, crab meat and garlic gratinated lobster. It looked so good I completely forgot to take a picture and it tasted fabulous!

on my wish-list

seals!

the captain

mmm..eat me

bait, it sure didn’t smell like roses

starting out early

the commune have plans to build a 7 stories high luxury hotel and conference centre…

Today I harvested what was left of my flowers, the seeds. I’ve tried planting seeds from the garden before without much success until last year when I planted some in the middle of winter in little pots outside. I brought them inside early spring and they started growing with amazing speed. So this year I’m doing it large scale!

chicks resting in the sun after “helping” me, eating seeds rather than picking

I’m not good at doing nothing and my attention span with knitting is limited to approximately half an hour. The weather picked up so I took my daughter rollerblading down the harbour. Tomorrow is D-day, well the L-day more like it. Lobster potting premiere!
Don’t know if other countries have the same set up? To protect the numbers of lobster they have in Sweden regulated the period where you are allowed to catch them. Probably half the population of Hönö goes out with their boats tomorrow morning. The lobsters have to be 8cm long or you have to chuck them back in, same with females with roe.
I suspect we’ll get some more crabs to cook this week.

One from my grandmothers photo album. In her days it was frowned upon sitting down doing nothing. She always had something in her lap, knitting jumpers or crocheting bedspreads or curtains. The smile on her face when I came to see her with a pair of socks or blanket that I had knitted!
In keeping with traditions I am now knitting slippers. Not because I have to but I find it relaxing. Plus in this house a pair of slippers are always needed in winter.

I’m swimming in the rain, I’m swimming in the rain, what a glorious feeling… I thought after my morning bike ride and swim I couldn’t get much wetter so I brought the power-washer out. 100 year old dirt, or maybe older, flooding off the walls in the barn.
So annoying the pump doesn’t work properly! I’ve had to run back and forth all morning, turning it on and off. It used to have an automatic switch that turned it on and off when the pressure got high or low. It’s on the top of my wish-list, after the shower leak, to fix.

Anyways the barn walls look great! A bit more digging and soon I can start with the concrete foundations…